this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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See the post on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/provisionalidea.bsky.social/post/3lhujtm2qkc2i

According to many comments, the US government DOES use SQL, and Musk is not understanding much what's going on.

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[–] Sal@mander.xyz 27 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Someone needs to explain to Musk how to debug with the JSON so that the ipv6 GUI does not overflow into the git API front-end

[–] Sabata11792@ani.social 4 points 12 minutes ago

Easy. Just defragment the kernel flux, water root but do not saturate the soil, and then set the virtual tensors to sigWumbo++. If you saturated root then set the tensors to asyncoMumbo-- to account for the extra conductivity. After that refragment the kernel flux because it was happy that way.

[–] const_void@lemmy.ml 7 points 49 minutes ago (1 children)

He sure is loose with that r-word…

[–] SketchySeaBeast@lemmy.ca 2 points 8 minutes ago

It gets a reaction and that lets him feel something.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 21 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] umbraroze@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago

When Elon bought Twitter, I realised right away I'd need to close my account.

What made me hurry up exporting my data and closing the account were the reports of Elon Musk personally fucking with the systems, and the subsequent glitches and outages. Had to get it done while the site was still moderately functional.

And they just let this guy get his hands on actually important national computer infrastructure? Fucking hell.

[–] Tetragrade@leminal.space 27 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Sounds like he got confused looking at a view of a join.

[–] Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net 1 points 5 minutes ago

That, or he doesn't understand composite keys.

[–] ansiz@lemmy.world 43 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

If SSN based fraud is the program then let's establish an actual federal identification number. Even the Social Services bureau tried to get everyone to not use it as the end all source of truth. They only created it for social security benefits, literally only that purpose.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

They should just publish every SSN at once with names. That'll make them useless as "secret" numbers and useful as identifiers.

[–] ericatty@infosec.pub 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

In college, early 90s, our student IDs had our photo and SSN on it

I've operated ever since under rhe assumption anyone and everyone has access to it.

Then with all the data breaches over the last 10/15 years? Freeze credit reports with the 3 reporting agencies for free. Check for extra accounts with the free annual credit report pulls.

For all practical purposes, our SSNs are easily obtained by someone who wants it.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but a unique identifier has to be housed somewhere where in can be accessed in a format humans can read, which means it can be accessed and dumped so it's no longer private or secret.

I'm not a fan of biometrics, and I tolerate 2FA. I really think it's more important we change how we think about and use personal, unique, identifiers (like SSNs)

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Any lawyer, law firm employee, private investigator, insurance adjuster, or credit industry can get it easily. I operate under the same presumption.

[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 2 points 2 hours ago

hasnt that already happened with a data breach? i remember reading something about it

[–] Jonnynny@lemm.ee 82 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

He got community-noted for being wrong. Per usual, it's only a matter of time before he deletes his post.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 37 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

More likely, he'll delete the community note

[–] AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world 23 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

More likely, he'll delete the database.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 16 points 2 hours ago

Shit, I'd love for him to delete the twitter databases

[–] dragonlobster@programming.dev 43 points 5 hours ago (4 children)

It's hard to figure out what he's talking about , when he says the "whole social security database". Like in which tables are they duplicated? Does it mean the entire row is duplicated or just the SSN, it might make sense to be duplicated depending on the schema. Is it an append only db, so there might be updated columns on the same ssn and you need to filter by the latest update timestamp? Who knows.

But also, saying that there's a "social security database" and then following that up by the govt "doesn't use SQL" so.. the db is actually just a spreadsheet? A .txt file? The SSNs are just written down in someone's notebook? Lol

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 4 points 57 minutes ago

He looked over the shoulder of one of the script kiddies he hired and saw 2 lines with the same SSN, freaked out, remembered some database words he picked up somewhere and hopped on twitter.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 26 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

SSNs are reused. Someone dies and their number gets reassigned. The database could easily be keeping track of all previous assignments for any given SSN.

Remember, SSNs are designed for social security and nothing else. They got picked up as a unique ID by private interests as a hack. They were never supposed to be as widespread in use as they are. The federal government using it this way is the specific, designed use case.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 7 points 3 hours ago

Yep, and any attempt to replace them with a purpose designed government ID has gotten conspiracy nuts to shut it down

[–] some_designer_dude@lemmy.world 11 points 4 hours ago

It’s LotusNotes all the way down

[–] iii@mander.xyz 11 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Or mongoDB 🙄

Probably something bespoke/legacy.

[–] enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works 2 points 39 minutes ago

Have you met out lord and saviour COBOL?

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 6 points 3 hours ago

https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1889062581848944961

thought the replies would be better. Some people deducted that it uses plain text.

[–] Randelung@lemmy.world 20 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Of course. Everyone who's ever used a DB knows it's BS. As long as the data is structured - which it a) is because he was able to make assertions about it and b) fucking Excel files are enough - it CAN be imported and SQL'd on. Even Excel has built in support for fuck's sake, not to mention Python and PowerQuery.

The dude is a self-certified moron - he probably struggles with the concept of PKI, too.

[–] Snowclone@lemmy.world 2 points 43 minutes ago

He was baffled a building he was opening had a water use plan. You know. That thing everyone who's built a building larger than a shed has to deal with.

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